There have been a lot of things coming up in reading and listening and doing that have made me start to rethink what I make my art and craft with, how I live me life and how those two things intertwine and the implications they have.

If I am truly devoted to the idea of craft leftovers, should I really order yarn for a yarn giant that treats me like complete crap while I’m placing an order and gets all their yarn milled 1000 miles away? Shouldn’t I order from the mill that is in my state, or at least my country? Should I try just get yarn that is used, old, recycled, local, on sale, run offs?

And in the same vein of that, should I really even ever shop at Joann’s for craft supplies? But that begs the question, where to shop than? Where is a place that I can buy satin cording for the sock bags I’ve been making lately? I couldn’t have had that spontaneous crafting moment on Wednesday had it not been for my trip on Joann’s the night before.

I heard a great podcast on Bad At Sports Sunday that was kind of in this vein, talking about integrity, but also about legitimacy. Advertising and corporations squeezing in on independent artists and crafts people. Kind of a commercialization of the independent movement that is so rich and wonderful. The artist they were interviewing said at one point, “commercializing something that I am a part of that I don’t want to be commercialized” and “we have to attack them every time they come into our space”.

There has been some controversy in the chicago area about big beer companies providing free beer to art openings to try to appeal to the ‘arts’ crowd. About that she said, “who made this decision, what was signed, what are the concequences, and how can it be replaced”. It’s hard to resist free beer for your opening when your a starving artist, but by taking that beer from that company, you are stopping support for brands you like and are dedicated to. Why is it always up to the artists putting on the show to provide all the spread. I like the model that has been set up by Mess Hall.

Pot Lucks. Home Brew. BYOB.

There are so many alternatives to accepting handouts from big corporate companies, to buying supplies from Joann’s. From buying new things in general

Can I reasonably go without buying new things? Can I keep buying new books and craft supplies to a minimum when all other options are exhausted…. Taking Craft Leftovers to the extreme and really embracing the motto I’ve set up for it of living life creatively, not just crafting creatively sometimes.

I’ve always attempted to keep my materials in line with the concept of my art work and now I’m finally bringing it all together and I’m starting to live my life with more integrity, and I want to share with you the ideas I have come up with to keep my life in line with my morals. How can I stop buying from A-holes and  restore the adventure and uniqueness to life experience. How can those two go together when the common perception that adventure and pleasure comes from buying the cheapest in the best deal?

I’ll post about what I’ve come to find the last couple of years of Craft Leftovers and how I’m going to apply it to my life in general over the summer. An experiment of sorts. See where it goes.

See you soon!

Kristin

And some other stuff too!

So I did my dishes and made some sock bags! Hooray!

And here is the mug I made in ceramics filled with yummy ginger spice green tea!

And here is the story that happened yesterday. So my tire was peeling. It was really strange because all the other tires looked really new, but this one back right tire looks old and crappy and where the white was on the tire it was peeling away from the inner part of the tire. I felt like it was going to explode if I hit a bump wrong. The thing was that it’s my parent’s mini van, they were nice enough to let me borrow it for the move and the extra length has caused me to consistently hop curbs all over town with that said tire. Over the past couple years my parents have been really nice about letting me borrow their cars off and on and fixing mine when it breaks. So getting the tire fixed and the oil changed was the least I could do before giving their mini van back to them in 3 weeks.

I went to farm and fleet because they do pretty good work and it’s cheap. I knew it was going to take 3 hours though, so I took plenty of knitting and crochet to work on as well as my sketch book. I went there and was really surprised because the guy who put in the work order said it would be “1 hour” maybe less. And I was like “really! that’s awesome!” So I pulled a chair from the waiting room to outside (it was like 75 and wonderful, i couldn’t sit in air conditioning in a gloomy smelly room on a day like that) and I proceeded to make a new crochet head wrap pattern. It felt so good to make a pattern up again. It’s been too long!

Here is the head wrap:

(I totally need to cut my bangs btw, geeze, it’s on the to do list now.)

Anyway, so then I proceeded to check out my sock. I turned the heel yesterday and had this feeling that one the heel flap (which i just accidentally spelled hell flap! maybe it is, who knows) was too long and two I didn’t turn the heel right. It just seemed like the center between the two sections of decreases was too wide. So here I was at Farm and Fleet sitting outside the automotive shop, tooling away at my socks. It turned out that the deal was I divided it in half wrong. In fact, not in half at all! I made the heel flap on 44 stitch out of 68 instead of 34! That’s a huge difference. So I ripped it all back to the cuff, picked up all the stitches, and returned the heel, no wait, cuff! Gah! I neglected to knit another heel flap before turning it, so Riiiiiiiiiiip! Out that went and now I’m all set knitting the heel flap on 34 sts and before I turned the heel.

I looked at the clock when I saw them take my car in, I had been there for 2 hours! It was another hour before they finished. I was there for almost 3 hours exactly. Ha!

That’s my story.

The head wrap will be this weekend’s pattern. I need to tweek it a little though. I made it too long, so I need to redo it with a chain of 50 instead of 65. I can actually tie it and it’s supposed to button. Woops! I’ll just make it will a different color and then I can have two

Well, I need to do some more cleaning and then go to the BFA show group opening. I should probably change first too. I still have clay all over my pants.

See you all later!
Kristin

So I put up a little thumbnail of my notes laid out yesterday from when I was studying for my exam in ceramics. Some may think that exams in art classes are cake, but let me straighten that one out, exams in studio classes are the hardest I have ever taken. Hands down. We had 10 essay questions that we had to answer, no multiple choice, no true false, you just have to know… really the best way to test because you really do have to know in order to do well, no guessing here. And the subject is hard to remember too. Firing temps, the different definitions for different terms specific to ceramics. Quartz Immersion Point, Crawling, Crazing, Dunting. Then what are the various temps for glaze firing and bisque firing and the corresponding cone numbers and etc. You either know it or you don’t.

I studied like mad. I copied by hand all of my notes into one place, then copied all the definition, then read it all over and over again, repeating it out loud…. for hours over the course of 4 days.

It paid off! Hooray! I got a “19.5! Excellent!” So, I was worried I was going to get a B+, but now, i’m going to get an A no problem! (The exam was actually worth 20% of our grade, yikes!)

And with that good news, I’m going finish the dishes and make those sock bags. I’ll show you pictures later.

Isn’t this great! Posts yesterday and today! Amazing!

Kristin

I am so almost completely graduated and I am just so happy. I just did my final presentation and now it’s just cleaning up studios and getting final grades and having final individual conferences with professors. Cake! Well mainly it’s cake because I don’t have to work on things like a crazy person, which of course makes me really work like crazy person. Remove assignments and I work like mad, give me assignments and I just fulfill the requirements. Go figure.

So tonight I went out for a celebratory dinner with a friend, took a shower for the first time in I’m not telling how long because I’m embarrassed, but I promise you it hasn’t been a whole week or anything like that.

I wanted to show you the finished window display for the On Finishing project:

And some of my favorite projects that I’m still working on:

In the next order of business here are the pictures of me playing with resin and studying for an exam that I was talking about like a week or so ago:

And more making stuff, but no pictures yet:

I sold the sock bag I made the other day and got an order for another one to be made so I cut the fabric for that today. I’m going to try to do all my dishes up, clean the ferret litter, and sew those bags up. That’s my goal for tomorrow.

I’m going to also make more of the small sized reusable tea bags too because those seem to be selling like hotcakes, although that’s only an assumption because I’ve never sold hotcakes, just reusable tea bags…. hotcakes and tea does sound like a stellar combo though. Yum!

Perusing the internet is what I do and I came across this artist and this zine which made me think of how badly I want this bike:

This little beauty is made just for women of shorter stature, me at 5′3 1/2″ qualifies for that. Ah someday, I guess my 5 year goal is to get good enough and active enough in biking (and enough cash flow) that it would warrant this purchase.

And with that in mind I’m getting to work

From now on I’ll be posting more often and I’m so excited about that.

Oh I just thought of another story to tell you, it will be a good post for tomorrow, so check back!

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Originally uploaded by Kristin Roach

So it freaking snowed a few days ago. Can you believe it! It was almost May! Those white flecks in the picture are snow! Big flakes of snow!

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Originally uploaded by Kristin Roach

Now where the heck did spring go? I swear it was about 40 degrees just 3 days ago and today it is beautiful and 80 degrees. I rode my bike all around town and shot some photos.

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Originally uploaded by Kristin Roach

This is a picture I took of myself weaving on Sunday. I’m just weaving up the remainder of my warp. I figure if I have 12 more feet of usable linen warp, why not use it.

I’m hoping to make a long length of cloth to make a series of samplers based on american folk tales. There are a few ways I’m thinking about doing, but I haven’t decided yet.

That’s all for right now, I’ll post more soon.

Kristin

So I briefly mentioned the resin I bought the other day and how I was going to cast with it and how it was really toxic and etc etc etc. Just for the record, resin is kind of against the grain for me. It’s so toxic and bad and it’s just nasty for me, everyone around me, and the environment. I would never have used it/bought it except for class.

A little even further back story to this whole thing. For this piece I’m doing, it’s a brooch. The brooch is plastic and the clasp was going to be silver. This might get metals nerdy, sorry. I carved my waxes for casting the silver and just needed to invest them and set it out (maybe 30 mins work total). Well, I didn’t put two and two together that it needed to be out by a certain date and I missed it. I was so annoyed with myself, but it was my fault (in my defense it was due on a Saturday night, the Saturday that I was dropping off stuff for one show and taking down my BFA show). Anyway, enough excuses, I missed being able to make my thing out of metal, so I needed to get this more lame, more toxic resin to do the fixings for the back clasp. So I get it all done, poured, sanded, polished, buffed, bladdy blah blah. And I show it to my professor and he was like “I thought you were going to do that in silver” and I was like “Yeah, but I missed the date for the kiln” and he was like “oh, well, why don’t you just fire it this week, if you get it invested tonight you can pour on Wednesday”.

Great! and Gaaaaaaaaah! All at the same time. It’s like, why didn’t you tell me that last monday when I said I missed the firing date! and I could have saved myself some skin cancer, money, and time…. And also, thank you, thank you, thank you! So I stayed extra late tonight and spurred and invested and prepped for firing my little jobbers for my brooch.

I have had some extra special issues with keeping my deadlines straight for school this semester and neglected to realize just about all of them. I’m usually so on top of school stuff. Yep. So now I have class at 8am tomorrow and at almost midnight I just finished labels and my statement for the group bfa show that I should have had done this morning and could have easily finished Saturday or Sunday. Woops.

I did have a good sunday, I was in the studio all day, I was productive at home on clm stuff. And I escaped for a couple of hours to go to the dekalb SnB at Borders.

I had my birthday coupon for 25% off and with the extra sale of yarn I just had I went ahead and bought a book I have been wanting for a long long time. Julia Child’s The Way to Cook. Just about the best freaking cook book ever!

The thing is that I have been going back and forth between this and The Joy of Cooking, which is another classic. I finally went for Julia Child’s because of her French influences, and I love her, and I love her show, and I love her book My Life in France. And she is a steller recipe writer.

I’ve started reading it cover to cover because it is just that good. She has these great Master Recipes and has organized the book in a really smart way, she groups food types by how they are cooked, so she has a master recipe for beans, styles of soup, meats that are cooked the same way, etc. I bought an organic roasting chicken a couple of weeks ago that just went into the freezer and so now I’m finally going to try my hand at making it. I’m not sure when, but soon I think. And I’m going to use her method for making it. Hooray! I’ll report back about that when it happens.

In other randomness, because this is kind of a post of random stuff. Here is a progress photo of the installation at the yarn shop:

I swear things are getting more knit up than the last photo. Actually today, I finished 2 things! Hooray! Jason’s scarf and the little springy lap blanket! I’m hoping to also finish a little tote deal, a sweater vest, and most likely that’s it. If that. I’m happy I finished anything at all. In the grand scheme of knitting, 4 days a week and 3 hours a day isn’t a whole lot for 11 projects

Well, I need to wrap up some stuff before heading to bed, it’s going to be a short night for sure.

See you all soon!

++ Kristin Roach ++

I have to admit that it has been a long time since I have been able to sew. Well, yesterday morning I was cruising through my rss feeds for the first time in, oh, a month and I finally couldn’t take it anymore.

I said “I’m sick at looking at what cool stuff other people have been making! I want to make something! Right now!” And so I did:

The thing is that I’ve been doing so much knitting lately for the On Finishing project and really 0 sewing and only a little crochet. I haven’t actually finished anything lately, no new crafty goodness around the house. It has been driving me a little nuts. I have been wanting a sock project bag for such a long time and so after seeing a million cute little sewn deals all over the interweb, I shut my computer and sewed with such frenzy that I sewed straight through my finger, seriously, and entry and an exit crafting wound. I wear it with pride. It actually hurts more now than it did yesterday just because I didn’t clean it out (I should seriously know better, come on!), but it sounds worse than it is.

It only took me about 30 mins to make the bag, finger damage and all (it didn’t really bleed too much thank goodness, so it didn’t really slow me down other than a few swear words).

I put an interview with a pretty neat artist pair on craft leftovers today, so go check that out.

I ran across this tutorial today which reminded me of the pin tin canny(not in the sense like they ripped it off, just a similar fun vain of: tin can+ sewing stuff=pin cushion) and I really like the way the did it, so you should go check that out and make one. I think I’m going to make one too.

I also saw this fun little job on whipup.net, I was going to do a tutorial on something like this for cl, but it seems someone has beat me too it, good for them I say, now I can just post a link and follow their instructions And because I was going to do it, I had all the supplies on hand. I have them cut out, but I need to go to my studio and grab some wood to mount them on. So I’ll post some pictures of that tomorrow. I’m sure I’m going to go stamp crazy

I’m off to the studio now, finally, to glaze ceramics stuff and then work on my brooches. I had to buy my own resin, some nice acrylic stuff, because what we use at school just wasn’t toxic enough for me. Here’s to respirators, gloves, and a nice thick apron!

I’ll show you pictures when I get it all finished up, heck, i’ll take some progress photos and show you those too!

Well, see you all later!

++ Kristin Roach ++